#and i haven't drawn a comic with this many panels/characters in a while
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Then, gripping the handhold, Obi-Wan leaned out the open door as the gunship rose, eyes sparkling even across the growing distance, and with a warm smile he pressed his fingers to his lips, holding his hand out to Cody and blowing the kiss his way. “Wait for me,” he called. “Wait for me and I’ll come home to you! I swear I’ll come home!”
From time is not alone by Redminibike1
I drew this lovely, adorable scene from @redminibike1's fic time is not alone. I just... couldn't not after reading it, it's so good, so thank you for a) writing it, and b) giving me permission to draw it! 🧡
#the clone wars#tcw#obi wan kenobi#commander cody#codywan#clone trooper boil#clone trooper waxer#still absolutely foaming-at-the-mouth feral over this#and i haven't drawn a comic with this many panels/characters in a while#so this was perfect to get back into the groove of it#also#waxer and his bald head remain so so hard to draw
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My random comic Recs #1
I've been reading more comics lately, so I wanted to share my love for them in the hopes that someone might give this medium a chance!
Note: I am not a fan of superhero comics, because I simply don't like that genre, so don't expect superheroes below. Gonna make these posts every now and then and they will always include 4 recs.
1.) The Many Deaths of Laila Starr
Death got demoted and sent to earth as a mortal! Some boy is going to figure out how to cheat death in the future, and our girl Death really doesn't appreciate that.
The entire graphic novel is only 5 issues long, so it's VERY digestible and easy to get through.There is something so light and playful about the art style, and the vibrant colors really sell it.
For people that are completely new to comics as a medium, I imagine that this is actually an A+ book to start with for the reasons I just mentioned. The way paneling and the flow of time is done in here, is a great example as to why comics are so unique as a medium and why they should be looked at as its own art from, separate from movies or books.
2) Mécanique Céleste (Or "Mechanica Calaestium" in the German translation, or "Aster Of Pan" in the English translation)
An absolutely breathtaking French comic. Aster lives in Pan, a post-apocalyptic France where she scavenges for wreckage with her friend Wallis. After their people come under a threat by the Federation of Fortuna, they are given a choice —submit to Fortuna’s rule or beat them in a weird Hunger Games-esque version of Dodge, called “Celestial Mechanics”.
The detailed art pieces in each panel, the careful line work, the lively way the characters move and the stunning watercolors captivated me from the first page. This graphic novel (now 2 volumes) is one of a kind and truly unique!
3) Something Is Killing the Children
Note: Comic contains a lot of gore and violence!
Children are starting to disappear in Archer's Peak. The ones that come back tell impossible stories that no one seems to believe. Only one stranger trusts these tales - a mysterious girl named Erica Slaughter who seems to be able to see these creatures too. And she's here for business.
I loooove Something is Killing the Children. I haven't finished reading the ongoing volumes yet, but I am super fascinated at how well the pacing goes in this story. The rough art style with Erica's freaky large eyes is SO fun, and you start appreciating it even more the longer you read.
4) Mon Ami Pierrot ("Mein Freund Pierrot" in German, "My friend Pierrot" in English)
Another fabulous French comic! Cléa is to marry soon - a young man name of Berthier. Right before the wedding she meets the fascinating magician Pierrot though, who completely changes the course of her life. Entranced by his whimsical nature that makes her feel "free" for the first time in her life, she follows him and leaves her previous life behind. During her stay with Pierrot, questions arise, though. Who is he really? All the while her betrothed sets out to find her again.
The Ghibli influence both art- and storywise is easy to make out, and I personally really enjoyed that. I particularly love the colors and the facial expressions the characters are drawn with. Everything feels very whimsical and playful and I had a good time going through this chonker of a graphic novel!
No spoilers, but I expected toothrottingly-sweet wholesome stuff, and ended up surprised on several occasions. I think the colours and art style really help give those moments wham, because you don't expect it.
#i talk sometimes#comics#graphic novels#comic recommendations#long post#comics are super duper cool and you should try them!!
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2023 Art Summary
Some of the many things I worked on over the past 365 days. More details below.
Happy New Year!
Just like last year, 2023 was full of even more character art, including a brand spanking new OC. You haven't seen much of the comic yet, because it's not done, but there's been progress on that in the background as well. I also started commissions last March. None are featured in this post so I could focus more on original art, but I wanted to give a special thank-you to all my past commissioners. Not a single one of you were a customer service nightmare, in fact it was quite the opposite. I appreciate everyone who's been kind enough to give me work and treat me well.
The rest of this post is going to be some of my favorite pieces by month, and a little about them. I usually spare my followers from most details in my posts, because there's often not much of interest to the public to say, so this is mostly self indulgent.
January
I decided to revisit Tom and Maudlin, as I hadn't drawn them much since creating them. Whenever I make a new character of importance, I try to go out of my way to put them in varied poses and expressions so that I am able to understand how their bodies work by the time I need them for a real project. It's also a great way to explore their personalities, although I feel that I'll have to push Tom's emotional side more in the future.
February
Props for the comic! It sucks to have to design things on the fly, so it helps to have notable objects designed beforehand. Especially if it's important to the plot. Some of these appear in more panels than others, but it smooths out the comic process nevertheless to have ample references on hand.
March
More character designs to spare me from designing mid-comic production. If they don't have lines in the comic, then I ask random people to assign names to them to make it fun, and because it's easier to keep straight who's who when they're not named Man 1 and Man 2. Left to right, they are Johnifer (you can already see why I name the ones with dialogue myself), Wanda, Jean Vincent, Booker, Charles, Maribelle, and Gertrude.
April
It'd be silly of me to pretend as if 90% of my output isn't shitposts. When you dedicate most of your art time to a project, then you're not going to end up making any other art unless you satisfy primitive monkey brain somehow. In my case, that's usually addressed by drawing funny shit. Early this year is when I discovered how easy it is to crack jokes with Scatterbrain. This goofiness is now embedded into her personality permanently. Expect more of this.
May
April-June is when I do my Art Fight preppin', which usually consists of me making a list of my most neglected OCs and giving them some attention. I also try to get around to eventually making all of them a reference sheet in this style, just so they have something standardized between them. This year, Walla Walla had her turn. She's a shitpost character, so I won't be drawing her much again, but she's a good excuse to draw some J-fashion doodles. My interests outside of cartoon stupidity don't really make it into my art often, so she's a minor outlet for some of it.
June
I've made even more character designs this year than last year, but they were all background characters, making Raoul the only new important one. He's been officially-unofficially written into the story since 2022, but it's very hard for me to make OCs that are written before they are designed. Everyone else was designed first and assigned a role in the plot later, so he got put off for a good while. I finally got around to it though, after I killed some darlings. He is now an all-new species, and I modified the chain design to something less clunky compared to what would be historically accurate.
July
July is, of course, Art Fight month. All other art is put on pause. This year, my favorite attack was a drawing of Enchanted Bones for my friend Bugles. I drew the character independently from the background, which is why the lighting situation is as unfortunate as it is, but we don't talk about that. Thank you to everyone who attacked me and made awesome art, I'll revenge you maybe in a few years. Sorry for the wait, but the backlog is mighty long.
August
Stanson got a slight redesign in the last year, so he can fit with the style of the comic better. He's actually the oldest character out of the bunch. I had no purpose for Scott when I made him and threw them together in the same folder. I had a few one-off designs that I figured I'd keep around in case I ever did an OCT, but these two got yoinked out of it when I started getting story ideas for the them. Stanson is a cowboy (not really), so it became a western setting to make sense of it. I plan on giving him the same sketchpage treatment the other characters have gotten, but I've been putting it off purposely for a while. You'll just have to wait.
September
And there it is, the inevitable page of Raoul getting into various mischief (and subsequently getting his ass beat half of the time). He has a very abrasive personality that gets him into trouble. I don't want the comic to be heavily action-based, but he naturally lands himself in these positions and it lets me draw characters in new situations. His introduction to the story is still a long way off at this point, but I can't wait to pit him against Scott in some slapstick shenanigans.
October
Spooky month is incredibly busy for me in real life, so there isn't as much time for art as I'd like there to be. That's why I dedicated all my time that month to trying to get Halloween art done in time. I've been a fan of Homestar Runner since childhood, and as soon as I thought that Raoul would pull off a Jigen Daisuke look, I knew I wanted to do a full Homestar-esque set of costumes. The other ideas quickly fell into place. My version came out way more detailed than theirs usually are though. The spirit of Halloween possessed me.
November
I started going full gear on the comic around this time (I think 28 hours in one week when I stayed home), so there's an absence of polished personal art here. Scatterbrain eating some spaghetti is my placeholder art for "I worked on a website a bunch instead". It's far from done, but I've made major strides since then.
December
A secret santa gift for my friend, Toby! I continued doing mostly comic work, but I also made room for a secret santa and scheduled a bunch of art trades to complete between December and March. The rest still have to be completed, so you'll see that throughout 2024. Anyway, Toby's OC, Thomas, is based on the state of Michigan. I plastered him on a postcard in front of a highway sign with some Robins because they're the state bird.
There were many more drawings of course, and you can find them scrolling through my Tumblr, or on my DeviantART (I switched to Tumblr as my main site in late August). I hope the new year brings many improvements and happiness for everyone. Last year my goal was simply to start on the comic, which I did, but it was also to get it uploadable, which I didn't. I'm gonna have to aim for the same goal again. Life things were largely fine but still tumultuous enough to throw me off-course, but now my most dangerous family member has moved out and it should be somewhat safer to live here. Not 100% safe though. It never will be. I generally avoid talking about the comic extensively as I won't have a solid release date for some time, so this is the last you'll hear of it for now outside of the rare WIP screenshot. Wish me luck and have a wonderful new year!
#art#artists on Tumblr#Happy New Year#long post#art summary#2023 summary#summary of art#summary of art 2023
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Hello, i just wanna ask what do you think of the manhua JC? dont get me wrong but there scenes that i haven't read in the novel that were shown in manhua even briefly. For example, that JC hugging his puppies. While it was outrightly said that he did have dogs that were sent out after WWX came to lotus cove, I don't really think he was that emotionally attached to them considering how fast he changed his mind. Those little panels of things that were probably implied makes a lot JC delulu stans make him more uwu. While i dont think that child JC is that bad, he is a child for one thet throw tantrums. Even teenage JC is redeemable probably since he was not that bad yet, but i just dont get how they justify him being secretly uwu kind etc whatever it is a positive trait because of his innocent? past self. isn't it ironic how WWX said that JC didn't change at all in the 13 years he was dead, implying he is still immature and the same as ever. I also dont get the part where somehow someone who has such personality is becoming likable to many people, changing his character to fit their description. A few others, i dont really remember but im sure ive seen some, who have evidence of their claim that are too weak to support and does not give the whole picture. As someone who likes JC's patheticness, this is so bizarre to me that i dont really want to involve myself in tiktok or twt. sorry for the long rant, have a great day!
Hello there, Anon.
To be honest, I don't particularly pay any attention to mdzs manhua aside from simping its WangXian moments, lol. Like, my only basis is the original, mdzs novel, whereas other adaptations are just entertainment. And for entertainment, obviously I will only focus on WangXian.
So far, among the other adaptations, mdzs manhua is the closest to canon. Even then, there are things that were changed due to various factors, such as to shorten the lengthy original content or to add more humor, which is common in comic, manga, or manhua.
I mean, things about softening the characters in the manhua was not only done toward JC as far as I know. We saw how Lan Qiren being pretty much drawn like a comedic relief. Even Su She moments in the Second Siege was also drawn in quite a funny way, that makes us the readers find it hard to really immerse ourselves in the severity of the incident, in fact.
Is that a good or bad thing? That depends. For entertainment, mdzs manhua is really good, both from content and arts. Just don't take them as canon material or meta material, since there has been changes due to various consideration. And when things change, it's not Original anymore🙃
The fact I have Twitter just to use the username to login on other websites, and the fact that I don't own TikTok at all, makes me unqualified to say things about mdzs fandom on Twitter or TikTok, lol. I'm sorry, Anon. Honestly, aside from Tumblr and Lofter, I don't really engage in mdzs fandom on other platform...?
But characters with pet attribute generally spark more interest with fans. Just like how WangXian and rabbits and Lil Apple are. Canonically, kid-JC is indeed fond of dogs (puppies or adult dogs I don't know).
Though, whether this fondness is a long lasting fondness is a question. Because after Wei Wuxian left YMJ he didn't try to own any dog. Some fans take it as JC being loyal to WWX, like, he was waiting for him to come back, etc. But, another fact is that, if he is still fond of dog but didn't want to own it due to WWX, then why wasn't he the one who give the dog to Jin Ling? Isn't he supposed to be the best Uncle for Jin Ling?
My headcanon is that, the adult JC likes dog, but not particularly fond of it like how other Dog lovers are. It's like how most people are enthusiastic when they saw stray cats, but that's it, most people won't dedicate themselves to adopt them, gave them foods, or help them. Most people just "like" But not fond enough to dedicate their life for pets. And so is Jiang Cheng toward Dogs.
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8 Anti LO Asks
1. i love ppl who are like "wow persephone looks so mature now!!!" ma'am she literally looks the same, all of them do. the only person who looks different is hebe and she's just a hera clone now. i swear they just make up whatever they want to see and claim it as fact.
2. //FP..
I find it dumb that some people are gonna be like "Persephone is 30 now so her romance with Hades is perfect now" like, buddy, she could be 70 but she has barely lived like 1% of what Hades has lived, and why do I care if she's 30 if she acts and looks like a 19 y/o, if you're gonna use that 3000-year-old-l*li argument, then her romance with Hades, a +2000 year old guy, is creepier from the begining
3. Teen Hebe looks exactly like her mother, RS really has no understanding of character design smfh
4. NGL I'm kinda impressed with just how bad S2 has been. IDK why its this way, RS' lack of writing ability finally being too obvious to ignore? Her refusing to listen to her editor? Her being lazy and stealing ideas from other comics/fanfics/theories like she's done before? General burn out? Writing herself into way too many corners and her now flailing/burning it all down to doing whatever the hell this is? Who knows, but it's shockingly bad.
5. Def my favorite thing the stans try to do is claim the comic is actually “super diverse” and they post like .. one panel of a non-name nymph that’s drawn bigger or whatever and claim that’s actual representation. Like no?? If you can’t even name the character and they can easily be cut out of the comic with nothing being changed, that’s not representation at all. Far from it actually.
From OP: Exactly!
Reminding me of the ‘RS is normalizing breastfeeding’ posts I saw recently. It’s literally Ancient Greece, of course the nymphs with babies will breastfeed. I’m positive they haven't developed formula in the mortal realm. I don’t think getting excited over it is a bad thing at all but it’s disappointing because it’s the bare minimum.
6. gotta love GOTTA LOVE RS having persephone say her attitude when she was 7 years old was "internalized misogyny" like... I swear I could hear her thinking "hmm how can I address all the criticism I've been getting in the vaguest way possible?" like something about that moment feels very performative, as a way to throw a crumb to those with valid criticisms of her fantasy racism and complete double standards when it comes to the women she portrays
7. Not sure how this will all be handled in part 2 of season 2 (badly probably considering how bad the first few chapters are) but I think what ultimately bothers me so much about fans attacking and criticizing Demeter is that she’s not proven wrong.
What I mean is - when someone decides to do an overbearing parent storyline, typically they are supposed to show how the parent is right, but also wrong in not letting the child do something. Demeter not letting Persephone interact with Olympus was done because she felt Olympus was bad and would hurt her child - she is proven right because the gods use and abuse each other (especially women) and treat Mortals, Nymphs, Shades, and other non-gods as expendable trash.
However, what we don’t really get is Demeter being proven wrong. Sure, Persephone finds a friend in Eros and falls in love with Hades - but Hades is basically a romanticized, rich, slave driver that treats everyone around him badly. Eros doesn’t respect Persephone’s choices and forces himself into her business quite a few times. Persephone’s only real female friends, Artemis and Hera, also don’t really treat her well either. Artemis completely misreads her and Hera literally tries to set her up with her ex lover even though she’s barely an adult.
What we really needed to see was some positive aspects of Olympus- Hades actually being a decent person, Persephone finding true friendships, maybe groups that help lower-class beings, or Persephone finding something good at her university- something that proves to Demeter that while Olympus can be dangerous, it can be good too. I’m just not seeing the good at all, and that’s what makes it hard for me to paint Demeter as an abuser. If anything, all I’m seeing is a justified mother and a bratty, man-obsessed daughter who doesn’t respect her own privileged upbringing.
8. How can "the other kings became kings because they took advantage of a fertility goddess" make any sense when Uranus is a sky god just like Zeus (sky-->rain-->fertility) and Cronus is literally an earth god, he carries a sickle fcol
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Comic Strip History: Skippy Peanut Butter
Up until now, when I've written about words or phrases that end up being popularized through comic strips, the stories behind them have been fairly simple. They generally haven't involved trademark infringement, FBI and IRS investigations, (alleged) staged suicide attempts, and (alleged) false imprisonment, but this one (allegedly) involves all of those, and more.
And all because of peanut butter.
Researching and writing about this has been an odd experience, partially because I've never really thought peanut butter could have such an effect on someone's life, but mostly because Percy Crosby's story is incredibly tragic. There are certain facts that are in dispute, but where he ended up and how it affected his family are not, and it's awful to think about. At times I found myself laughing due to the absurdity of all of this stemming from a peanut butter dispute, but I had to continually remind myself of the ultimate result, which is not at all funny.
I've written about Percy Crosby and the comic strip Skippy very briefly before when I shared a Christmas themed comic strip during December. In the course of searching for a bit of information I could share along with the comic, I discovered a website created by Joan Crosby Tibbetts, the daughter of Percy Crosby and his second wife, Dale. On it, she includes a biography of her father, the history of the comic strip, as well as a fairly detailed account of the decades-long legal battle between her father, his estate, and the Skippy peanut butter brand. At the time I bookmarked it and decided to revisit it at a later date. More recently though, while reading an interview in The Comics Journal with Milt Caniff,, I saw him mention Crosby and his apparent mental illness (though he phrased it in a much less sensitive way), a detail of his story that I hadn't been aware of previously. This caused me to want to revisit the story, given that it seemed to be much more complex than I originally anticipated. Little did I know just how complex it would get.
Percy Crosby's character Skippy first appeared as a feature in Life Magazine in 1923. Crosby had been drawing comic strips and panels for many years prior to that, working at the New York World, for the McClure Syndicate, and even as a staff editorial cartoonist at the socialist newspaper The Call, but none of his characters or strips had been a big hit.He seemed to be drawn to writing gags involving kids and their views of the world, especially those who lived in urban New York, and had moderate success with strips along those lines such as Toddles, Beany And The Gang, and The Clancy Kids. Life Magazine had published quite a few of the single panel gag comics he had submitted to them in the past, even very early on in his career, so when he approached them about doing an ongoing strip about a group of kids, they accepted. Skippy ran for 3 years in the pages of Life, becoming quite popular and gaining a wide following. This caught the attention of the small Johnson Features Syndicate, who offered to run Skippy in newspapers nationwide. Crosby jumped at the chance for wider exposure, and in 1925 the daily Skippy comic strip debuted in newspapers. A year later, in 1926, King Features would pick up Skippy as well, as a Sunday feature. Crosby's contract with Johnson Features would end in 1930, at which point King Features also began running the daily strip.
Crosby's contract with Johnson Features allowed him to retain the copyright to the strip and its characters, which was not a very common occurrence at the time. The only notable previous example of this was Bud Fisher, who only gained full copyright of his creation Mutt and Jeff after a protracted legal battle. Amazingly, Crosby continued to retain copyright even after moving to King Features, and over the next few years would take further steps to ensure that only he could utilize the Skippy copyright and trademark. While still under contract with Johnson Features, in 1927, he hired Fred A. Wish to manage Skippy license arrangements, and in 1932, at Wish's suggestion, he created the company Skippy, Inc. to further protect the brand. At that time, it was becoming more and more necessary to do so, as the popularity of the strip had skyrocketed. The strip had been adapted into a very successful movie in 1931, and the number of licensed Skippy products had increased dramatically. These included everything from dolls and toys to food and flatware, and as you may be able to guess, as the number of licensed Skippy products increased, the number of unlicensed products also increased. The manufacturers of these were always taken to court by Crosby's lawyers, Lord, Day, & Lord, and due to the protections Crosby had put in place for his trademark, the courts always ruled in his favor.
That was until Joseph Rosefield got involved, and in order to talk about Rosefield, we must for a moment take a detour and talk about the history of peanut butter itself.
Pastes made of ground up peanuts have been made in South America and West Africa for many a century, and so-called modern peanut butter has been a thing since the late 1800s. It was originally what people these days would call "natural" peanut butter, which requires one to stir together the oil and the peanut mash in order to eat it. If left out, the two would eventually separate. In 1921, Joseph Rosefield patented non-separating, hydrogenated peanut butter, the type that is most widely available today. This innovation not only made it so it was unnecessary to stir it up, but also dramatically increased the shelf life and removed the need for refrigeration, something that was quite a luxury in those days. This allowed the product to be shipped over much longer distances and thus into the mouths of a greater number of customers. Hydrogenation basically made possible the peanut butter landscape as we know it. Rosefield was not the first to file a patent for the process of hydrogenating peanut butter; that honor goes to Frank Stockton, who did so three weeks earlier than Rosefield did. Stockton's patent was granted at the end of 1921, and first licensed to the H.J. Heinz company in 1923. Due to Rosefield's process and Stockton's process being slightly different, both men were issued patents in the same year, though Rosefield went on to gain more notoriety for the invention. Interestingly, the Stockton process is the one used in making all hydrogenated peanut butter these days, though those associated with the Skippy brand will bristle when this fact is mentioned.
Initially, Rosefield licensed the patent out to the E.K. Pond Company (a subsidiary of Swift & Company) in 1923, who unsuccessfully marketed their peanut butter in 1924 under the name of either Dainty or Delicia (sources are not clear on what it was actually called). They would later reintroduce it to the world as the much better known Peter Pan peanut butter in 1928. Due to a disagreement over how Rosefield would be compensated by the E.K. Pond company for his patent license, he severed ties with them in 1932 and decided to go into business for himself the next year.
And this is where the stories converge.
Perhaps inspired by the E.K. Pond Company, who had taken the name Peter Pan for their product without compensating James Barrie, the creator of the character, Rosefield decided to cash in on the popularity of the Skippy comic strip and use the name for his new product. Crosby's lawyers promptly sued him for trademark infringement, not simply because of the name, but also the packaging. There had been a long running motif in the comic strip of characters having conversations either in front of or while leaning on a fence. Sometimes characters would also sloppily paint words on said fence to get their messages across more loudly and clearly. This fence motif had even been used on the packaging of certain licensed Skippy products, so there had been a well known connection made between the fence and the comic character. Rosefield obviously recognized this connection, and thought his customers would as well, because the earliest Skippy peanut butter tins feature the Skippy name painted on a fence. This was a clear case of trademark infringement, and the court decided in Crosby's favor. The court ordered Rosefield to cease and desist selling his product under the Skippy brand.
Normally, that would have been the end of it, as it had been for a number of unlicensed Skippy products who got the same treatment from Crosby's lawyers. However, Joseph Rosefield was nothing if not persistent. Rosefield had employed trademark expert Lee W. Mida as a consultant on the licensing issue, who had advised him to simply ignore the result of the case and continue using the Skippy trademark anyway. Rosefield not only did so, but in the next few years would expand his peanut butter operations significantly. Rosefield Packing Company, which manufactured Skippy peanut butter, partnered with other companies to distribute it in more and more markets in several states. Around 1935 or thereabouts, they introduced the first chunky peanut butter, which became one of their more popular items and made them stand out from other peanut butter brands. The brand was originally sold in metal tins, but during this period was also the first to be sold in wide mouth glass jars, an innovation brought about by necessity due to metal shortages during World War II. By 1942, Rosefield Packing Company had gone from manufacturing several brands of mustard, relish, pickles, tapioca, and peanut butter to turning a profit by manufacturing only peanut butter under a single brand, Skippy.
Rosefield was not shy about advertising his product as Skippy, either. Not only did he continue to use imagery on the packaging that was reminiscent of the comic strip, but he decided to directly compete with Crosby's Skippy in some of his own arenas. From 1932 to 1935, the comic strip had been adapted into a popular radio show, sponsored by Wheaties cereal. In 1941, Rosefield decided to start his own Skippy radio show, Skippy Hollywood Theater, to promote his peanut butter. The show was notable for being pre-recorded, and was wildly successful not only as a radio show, but as an advertisement for the peanut butter. It ran until 1951.
It's odd, then, that during this time there was no legal action taken against Rosefield by Crosby, his lawyers, or Skippy, Inc. There could be several reasons for this, the most likely being that Crosby was so preoccupied with all of the other things going on in his life that he either didn't notice the rise of Skippy peanut butter, or didn't feel he could pay it the adequate attention that it required. During the 30s and 40s, Crosby had become increasingly politically active, writing several books and essays on various political subjects and inserting political commentary into his Skippy strips. Most of these were, to put it mildly, not well received, though some were more well received than others. In 1930, Crosby wrote a 3 month sequence lampooning Al Capone and the Racketeers, depicting him as a neighborhood bully named Spumone who headed a gang called the Jacketeers. This was received fairly well, and bolstered Crosby's confidence in his ability to send political messages. He wrote several articles decrying organized crime generally and Al Capone specifically, though newspapers refused to print them. Undeterred, Crosby used his own money to pay for ad space so the articles would run anyway. He used this same tactic again several times when newspapers refused to print his screeds against President Franklin Roosevelt and his various policies. When publishing houses refused to publish some of his political books, he similarly published them himself with his own money. This may not have been as much of an issue if he kept all of this out of the comic strip, but he was much too passionate about his political opinions to do so. Over time, Crosby inserted overt political messages into more and more strips, until they began to be more common than anything else. There was quite a bit of public outcry, and the popularity of the strip lowered significantly. Eventually, the public, as well as King Features Syndicate, had enough. The syndicate canceled the strip in 1945.
His strip ending wasn't the only thing on Crosby's mind at this time, however. Besides his main source of income being taken away from him, and feeling increasingly that he was being censored and silenced unfairly due to newspapers and publishers refusing to print his articles and books, his family and personal life were also in shambles. His first marriage had ended years earlier due to his alcoholism, prompting him to give up alcohol altogether when he married a second time. As things in his work and political life got worse, however, he returned to alcohol and with it came all of the problems he had with it previously. In 1939, after an altercation with his second wife, Dale, with whom he had 4 children, he traveled to Florida for two weeks, during which time Dale filed for divorce. He was ordered to pay $14,500 a year in alimony and barred from seeing his children. He remarried in 1940, but the divorce had a devastating effect on him, both psychologically and financially.
Those weren't his only financial problems, either. As far back as 1934, Crosby and Skippy, Inc had been investigated by the IRS for tax evasion. In addition to being an outspoken opponent of Franklin Roosevelt himself, he was also openly antagonistic towards Roosevelt's tax policies, refusing to pay taxes as long as Roosevelt was in office. While in the process of investigating William Randolph Hearst, owner of Skippy's publisher King Features Syndicate, Roosevelt decided to also send the IRS after Crosby. Due to the many articles Crosby had written against him, Roosevelt saw Crosby as a bit of a political opponent, and utilized the IRS to send him a message. By the 1940s, due to his mounting tax obligations, alimony payments, and legal fees relating these various issues, his financial situation was quite dire.
It seems reasonable to assume that, given all of this, he may not have been interested in going after a peanut butter manufacturer over a trademark dispute, and by the time it became a big enough issue, he may not have had enough money to do so.
And this is where things get a bit murky.
Up until this point, none of the facts that I've laid out are really in dispute. There are still some questions, but there are reasonable assumptions that one can make to answer them. What happened next, and why it happened, isn't so cut and dried.
Joseph Rosefield legally obtained the Skippy trademark for his peanut butter brand in 1948. How this happened was, depending on who you ask, either due to an opportunist taking advantage of a serendipitous confluence of unrelated events, or due to a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by Rosefield, Crosby's turncoat lawyers, and to a lesser extent Crosby's third wife. The latter seems quite far-fetched to me, but the former is also quite astounding to think about. When King Features canceled Skippy in 1945, the Skippy trademark also expired. Despite Crosby's attempts to revive the strip, all public goodwill towards him and his creation was gone, and no publisher wanted to touch it. A combination of his lack of ability to revive his creation, his financial struggles, his family issues, and his continuing alcoholism led him to attempt to kill himself in December of 1948. After recovering in a hospital, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and transferred to a mental institution, where he would be forced to spend the rest of his life. Meanwhile, two years earlier, the US Congress had passed a new trademark law, the Lanham Act, which would go into effect in 1947. Rosefield, taking advantage of the changes in trademark law imposed by the act, as well as the fact that Crosby's trademark had expired, filed for the trademark himself at the end of 1948. Crosby, now in a mental institution and unable to challenge this in court, would never gain the trademark back. Skippy would, beyond this point, be forever connected with peanut butter, and only peanut butter as far as the general public was concerned.
Which is where we circle back to Joan Crosby Tibbetts.
Joan was the third child of Crosby's second wife, Dale. After his divorce with Dale was finalized, Crosby was not allowed to contact her or his children due to orders from the court. Not only did Joan and her siblings never hear from him again, but they were not contacted by anyone upon his death, and only learned about it from an obituary in the newspaper. She was appointed the administrator of the Crosby estate in 1965, a position she took extremely seriously. For the remainder of her life, she made it her personal mission to uphold the legacy of her father, and to do this she felt it necessary to try and take the Skippy trademark back from the Skippy peanut butter brand's parent companies, Best Foods, Corn Products Refining Company, and eventually Unilever. Over the course of several decades she filed multiple lawsuits and petitioned the courts many times to cancel the Skippy peanut butter trademark. While unsuccessful at her stated goal, these efforts still had the effect of helping to keep the comic strip Skippy in the public consciousness, at least as much as it could be. She endlessly championed her father's work, doing more than anyone else to preserve its history in reprint books and on the Internet. I dare say most of what is still known about the comic strip and about Percy Crosby is due to her tireless efforts. Those efforts would continue until her death in 2019.
In 1998, she created the website skippy.com, which not only served to relay information regarding the history of the comic strip, ongoing efforts to preserve it, and her ongoing legal efforts, but also as a place for her to chronicle the life of her father as well as her various theories regarding how and why things ended up the way they did.
Her theories are not entirely without evidence, but it isn't extremely convincing. Given the timing of certain events, especially the trademark being granted not too long after Crosby was committed, it makes sense that she would be a bit suspicious. Also, given her experiences fighting against food companies and how badly representatives from said companies treated her over the years, it seems reasonable that she would blame them for much of what happened. That doesn't mean that all of what she believed is true, but it makes sense that she would think that. This also isn't to say that none of it is true. While the evidence is thin, it doesn't seem entirely implausible that some of what she thought happened did happen.
It's also very difficult to summarize neatly and tidily, but I'll do my best.
Joan basically connected everyone and everything that Crosby had spoken out against, as well as certain people in his life that she didn't like, to what she believed was a conspiracy against him. Franklin Roosevelt, the IRS, Al Capone, the FBI, Crosby's lawyers, Crosby's third wife, Best Foods, and Corn Products Corporation (or CPC) were all connected to it somehow, and the main thing connecting them was Joseph Rosefield. Franklin Roosevelt had passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (or NRA) in 1933, which she claimed Rosefield would eventually take advantage of in order to sell his peanut butter the way he did. She claimed Rosefield's lawyer Lee Mida not only advised him to continue using the Skippy trademark after he had been ordered not to, but also to report Crosby to the IRS in order to take attention away from what they were doing, knowing Roosevelt's penchant for using the IRS to silence his political opponents. This, she claims, is the sole reason he ended up getting in trouble with the IRS. In 1934, Crosby believed he had received threats against his life and was being followed by some unknown assailant, which he reported to the FBI. Joan claims that this was soon after the court had ordered Rosefield to cease using the Skippy trademark, implying Rosefield was trying to obtain it from Crosby by force. She claims he was unfairly maligned in the press following his divorce from Dale. She characterizes his third wife, Carolyn, as someone with "little education or business experience," and who "Crosby's friends and colleagues saw... as an opportunist." While she believed Rosefield was the one that reported Crosby to the IRS, she seems to imply that Crosby's lawyers Lord, Day, & Lord were the ones responsible for misreporting taxes paid. She claims that Crosby was committed to the mental institution by order of Carolyn's uncle, and that the attorney Carolyn hired to defend Crosby in the tax evasion case, Rose Lehman Stein, was "an agent for Rosefield." She claims Stein was responsible for keeping Crosby in the institution, reporting to the court that he was "too dangerous to release." Stein would later become president of Skippy, Inc, and Joan claims that further action was not taken against Skippy peanut butter after this due to Stein's supposed connection to Rosefield. She claims that although Crosby tried to write to his friends and family while in the institution, his letters were either censored or not delivered at all, and that he was told false information about his family and his children. She claims he was told his children had received money from Skippy peanut butter and did not want to speak to him. She claims a former attorney of Crosby's became US Attorney General but did nothing to help him in order to "protect his political interests," and returned to Lord, Day, & Lord just in time to oversee the merger between Corn Products Corporation and Best Foods. Rosefield had sold Skippy peanut butter to Best Foods in 1954, and the two companies merged in 1958.
Therefore, in essence, Rosefield took advantage of policies enacted by Crosby's least favorite president in order to strengthen his position, stalked Crosby in order to frighten him, got him in trouble with the IRS by not only reporting him but conspiring with Crosby's lawyers to make his taxes look awful, took advantage of Crosby's third wife by convincing her uncle to commit Crosby and convincing her to hire one of Rosefield's own attorneys, have that attorney make sure that Crosby could never get out of the mental institution, then have that same attorney take over Skippy, Inc. so Rosefield no longer had to deal with the trademark dispute, intercept all of Crosby's mail and alter it to give him and his family a false impression of what was going on, and have lawyers who had worked closely with Crosby in the past put together a new food company to further strengthen his position against Skippy, Inc.
No claim of hers, however, is as bold as the one relating to his suicide attempt and his subsequent committal to the mental institution. Joan not only claims that police reported they did not find which weapon Crosby used in the attempt, but also implies that the attempt was faked by someone hired by Rosefield. She doesn't say so explicitly, but she makes sure to not only point out the lack of a weapon, but also the fact that it was only 5 days after the attempt that Rosefield was granted the Skippy peanut butter trademark. She clearly wants anyone reading it to read between the lines.
Joan has always maintained that her father was not mentally ill and should not have been locked away in the mental institution. I don't think anyone will dispute that Crosby should not have been treated the way he was, but it's difficult to know whether the diagnosis was correct or not. He was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, the evidence for this being that he seemed to have an overwhelming anxiety about being targeted by people like Franklin Roosevelt, Al Capone, the IRS, and the FBI. Most average people these days who claimed that all of these people and groups were after them would probably be treated similarly. Most people don't have to worry about the president, government agencies, and crime lords all being after them at the same time.
The problem is that most people aren't Percy Crosby. Franklin Roosevelt did actually send the IRS after him, as well as the FBI when Crosby had implied he wanted to harm the president in one of his articles. Crosby had spoken out against organized crime many times, and it was very likely they weren't too fond of him and may have wanted to do him in. These paranoias didn't just come out of nowhere; they came out of his actual lived experience. That said, it still isn't as cut and dried as that. Crosby biographer Jared Gardner has stated that his political writings leading up to his committal are evidence enough of his mental illness, given how increasingly paranoid they became. Further, he postulates that his bouts with alcoholism may have exacerbated the issue or were a coping mechanism for said issues, or both. In the end, it's difficult to say with certainty what really was going on in Crosby's mind.
However much of Joan's theories are true or false can perhaps be debated, but when reading what she wrote on the website one must admit how passionate she felt about them. Each page of her biography of her father has this quote from James Madison at the top: "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." She routinely refers to Rosefield, Best Foods, and CPC as a crime syndicate, a criminal enterprise,and as food pirates. She speaks as glowingly about her father and his work as she does derisively about Rosefield and his compatriots. Her intense passion for this cause can't be understated.
That's why I felt a need to discuss it, and what immediately caught my eye when I came across it years ago. Percy Crosby was a complicated man, and while he did great work, it's incredibly uneven. Skippy the comic strip was very popular in its day, and was a major influence on subsequent comic strips about kids and their lives. His life had a tragic end, and his legacy may sadly only be remembered in the name of a brand of peanut butter that stole its name from him. However, I'm glad that there were, and hopefully still are, people who want to preserve a better memory of his life and work than just that. That kind of thing is really the whole point of this blog, after all.
But if you want even more information than I was able to cover here, please see:
Skippy.com, to read everything Joan wrote about the strip and her father, especially the Percy Crosby biography.
Percy Crosby's Skippy, Complete Dailies Collection, with invaluable introductory biographical material by Jared Gardner.
Skippy and Percy Crosby, biography by Jerry Robinson
Creamy and Crunchy, An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food for more than you ever wanted to know about peanut butter
Noah Van Sciver's interview with Jared Gardner about Percy Crosby and the most recent set of reprint books
Skippy at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Percy Crosby at Lambiek Comiclopedia
Joan Crosby Tibbetts obituary at The Daily Cartoonist
Stealing Skippy article by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Skippy vs Skippy: The Great Peanut Butter Trademark Wars article at JDSUPRA blog
Skippy Peanut Butter: The History of An Empire at Peanut Butter Pleasure blog
Crime, Corruption, Copyright, and a Kids' Comic: Skippy at Print Magazine
A Comic Strip, Crime, and Peanut Butter at Shrine O Dreams blog
Comic Book Legends Revealed #198 on Crosby and Skippy, at Comic Book Resources
Skippy Peanut Butter: The Story Behind The Lunchbox Staple at Mashed blog
Washington Post article from 1970 regarding Joan's litigation efforts
Washington Post article from 1980 regarding Joan's litigation efforts
News of Yore 1937: Tea Party Would Love Crosby archived article from 1937 at The Stripper's Guide
Cartoonist Crosby's Wife Wins Divorce archived article from 1939 at The Stripper's Guide
Final Skippy Sunday comic at The Stripper's Guide
The Original Skippy Scam website, which stopped being updated in 2000
Mailing list archive, discussion regarding Unilever trademark info
Official Skippy Peanut Butter history website as of 2002, which included an image of the original packaging.
Official Skippy Peanut Butter history website as of 2012, which removed the image of the original packaging.
Plaque at the site of the former Rosefield Packing Company with an image of the original Skippy peanut butter logo. The plaque was last photographed in 2020, and as of July 2023 it has been removed.
Skippy Radio Series based on the comic strip
Rosefield's Skippy Hollywood Theater radio show
The Momentous Peanut Butter Hearings, about the Congressional hearings on peanut butter in the 1960s. Only tangentially related, but information brought out in those hearings was used by Joan in her litigation.
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could you please ask 3, 17, and 19 for the artist ask???
SLEEP WELL!!
So.... I accidentally lied, and answered a day later than planned. Woops.
3. Least favourite things to draw?
I recently drew a comic with several panels full of large crowds of people, so currently that. I'm also kind of bad at political art, which I discovered thanks to another recent project.
What inspires you?
I kind of don't know. I like many stuff and things. I take lots of pictures of things, and eventually some of them connect to become a drawing. Sometimes it's as simple as "whatever I do, I need the next illustration to include a big snake. I will not rest until I draw the big snake" (based on true events).
Favourite character(s) to draw?
Well, to no one's surprise, it's my own Thomas, and Eskel from the witcher series (though I haven't drawn him in a while, I should find the time to do that again). For the same recent comic, I also drew the Mona Lisa (the person) a lot, she was tons of fun to draw. I gave her a huge ass. It was glorious.
Thanks for asking :)
asks from here
#ask thing#my art#?#sorry I answered much later than planned#I really should upload that mona lisa comic#It's optimistic for a change#Lisa got a makeover
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Behind the scenes for this comic -
This is preeeetty long, so I'll put it under read more.
So as with all the other comics I have done, the process usually is: lay out panels - lineart - adding special effects (which really is just adding gradients, I haven't really figured out using proper comic tones and stuff -)
Sketches for pages 1 and 2! I often used red pencil for basic outlines, just to figure out what goes into which panel, and then a more polished blue sketch I can draw off.
Initially, dark Bedi (lol) had one eye showing but that just made him look like the angry mango Avenger so I decided to show only the mouth instead.
If I'm feeling confident enough, I go straight off my initial sketch, as was with page 3. Here's the comparison between the sketch and a finished lineart!
And it is not fun drawing the bby so distressed :'''<
Page 3 had a few things going for it, like the fact that it had a gradient background and character outlines were in white - which I kind of blunt-forced my way into doing by clipping another layer on top of my lineart and painting that white. So many layers lol. I had separate panels for the blood drip on Altria's chest because I honestly wasn't sure what I was doing lol.
As for Princess Helena's design (again, she's the princess abducted in the story of the Saint Mont-Michel) there's nothing really deep about it. I don't think Fate will ever show what she looks like so I just thought to draw a princess-y outfit, but I ended up kind of liking it.
And man, the fact that Bedivere still remembers Princess Helena and feels guilty over it after all those years, enough to tell Ritsuka about it in his Interlude. I kind of wanted to explore that really, that he feels a lot of guilt for the people he thinks he failed, and naturally, that fear of losing another person he loves extends to Ritsuka. Which leads to imagined fears on the next page.
Page 4 is probably the most complicated page, it took me 3 hours working on the line art for this. The hands around Ritsuka are the Foreign God and Goetia...well, I tried, but Beast I has really detailed hands...
It's a bit confusing to me how much of Chapter 6 the summoned Bedivere actually remembers, because Mash says he probably didn't experience it, but he definitely is aware that he's a Bedivere from a different history - the profile even says he swore loyalty to Ritsuka because they helped him fulfill his wish. So...does he actually remember it or not? From some comments on character materials on the wiki, he acknowledges the Camelot allies, and he finds himself upset at seeing Altria Lancer (which she also comments on in her own materials and I realllllly wish we see this interaction in the game.) He also knows she isn't his King, so he seems to know that they were able to let Goddes Rhongomyiad to rest.
On the other hand...Bedivere seems to avoid talking about Camelot in Tristan's Interlude and doesn't seem to acknowledge it in his My Room lines. Which could just be him not wanting to talk about it rather than having forgotten, but couldn't be Fate without some messy lore. Welp. This got long.
Anyway, these four pages are actually the only ones I initially laid out, and the rest is me going rogue and thinking, "Let me add one more page....hm, not concluding enough, one more - and one more -" so the rest of the comic is a bit plain in comparison.
It's a bit of a mind twister figuring out where Ritsuka's side ponytail is every time I draw her. I've drawn Bedi enough times to not be confused where his metal arm is lol.
I also realized midway that it's a little confusing as to what is really happening and half-assed it into Bedivere having his intrusive thoughts while walking with Ritsuka. The first four pages had something going for it which changed in the last six pages, that's me not planning ahead lol.
What else...oh yeah, I initially wrote all dialogue in by hand but my handwriting is atrocious and not really consistent, so I ended up using CSP to insert the text.
If you're ever gonna make a comic, don't be like me who lays out all the visuals with only a vague idea of what the dialogue is gonna be and then end up with longer text than expected in place ^^;
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Heyyy!! So this isn't really a question but I just wanted to say that I love your art so much!!!! Your comics inspire me to draw my own (though I haven't tried yet) and your art in general gives me so much joy ^~^ Love you and your art!!
Ohh gosh! Thank you so much. Hearing stuff like this inspires me to draw in exchange, to be honest.
And you are thinking of drawing comics? I could give you a few tips. I mean, I am in no means a professional but I’ve drawn a bunch of comics and learned stuff about them over the years. This is just stuff that I often think about while sketching out a page.
-Never crop limbs from the joints, like elbow or wrist, or the head from the neck. I think that this is more on the photography side but it applies to this too. -Vary the zoom ins and zoom outs. For example, having a comic with just everyone on every panel cropped from the middle gets boring very easily. Zoom out to show the full body and the environment for a change. Did something dramatic/important happen? Zoom in drastically to show a reaction or the important thing.-The flow of the panels is a tricky thing, but it’s a thing. Think about where the reader’s eye moves when they see the page. Do you want them to see the speech bubble first or the character? Many things can lead the viewers eye. Like body gestures and speech bubbles. This is tricky and difficult to point out without example pictures.-Introduce the environment on the first panels with big zoom outs. Not entirely necessary but the purpose of it is to give the viewer an idea of where the scene is taking place.
Uh, I hope this helps on some front? I cut my explanations down a bit because I do not want to make this long and I’m not great at explaining. Thank you again!
#emmi-cakes#response#comic help#ask#asks#I've never tried to explain this stuff before but now I realize that there's a lot that goes on
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